HBA-CMT H.B. 3591 77(R) BILL ANALYSIS Office of House Bill AnalysisH.B. 3591 By: Hunter State, Federal & International Relations 7/10/2001 Enrolled BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE An academic statewide resource sharing project was first funded in Fiscal Year 1994 under the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The 53 publicly supported four-year academic and medical libraries were original TexShare members. During the 75th Legislature, legislation was passed that expanded TexShare membership to independent academic institutions and community colleges, and established TexShare as a program of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. During the 76th Legislature, legislation was passed which brought public libraries into TexShare, and in September 1999, the State Library assumed full administrative responsibility for TexShare. Prior to the 77th Legislature, TexShare was managing the transition from a resource sharing program focused on academic institutions to one that fostered resource sharing among all academic and public libraries. House Bill 3591 expands membership in TexShare to include nonprofit libraries that provide extensive library services and collections in the fields of clinical medicine and the history of medicine. RULEMAKING AUTHORITY It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that this bill does not expressly delegate any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution. ANALYSIS House Bill 3591 amends the Government and Utilities codes relating to the TexShare consortium. The bill includes libraries of nonprofit corporations in the fields of clinical medicine and the history of medicine as entities for which the TexShare resource-sharing consortium is maintained by the Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission. The bill requires an electing company, on customer request, to provide private network services to a library and a project eligible to have been funded by the telecommunications infrastructure fund as of January 1, 2001. EFFECTIVE DATE September 1, 2001.